Islamist militants in Iraq have boasted of slaughtering dozens of Iraqi soldiers captured in the fighting which has consumed the country in recent days.
Pictures posted on a militant website appear to show masked fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) forcing captives to lie down in a shallow ditch.
Further photos appear to show the bodies of the men soaked in blood after being shot.
Isis militants with captured Iraqi soldiers wearing plain clothes after taking over a base in Tikrit, Iraq
The captives are herded by the armed men. Iraq's military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, confirmed the photos' authenticity today and said he was aware of cases of mass murder of captured soldiers
The soldiers seconds before they are killed. UN human rights chief Navi Pillay warned of 'murder of all kinds' in Iraq
The soldiers are executed where they lie in a shallow ditch
Most of the soldiers who appear in the pictures are in civilian clothes. Some are shown wearing military uniforms underneath, indicating they may have hastily disguised themselves as civilians to try to escape.
'This is the fate of the Shi'ites which Nuri (al-Maliki, Iraq's president) brought to fight the Sunnis,' a caption to one of the pictures reads.
Others showed ISIS fighters apparently seizing facilities in Tikrit.
The grisly images could further sharpen sectarian tensions as hundreds of Shiites heed a call from a spiritual leader to take up arms against the Sunni militants that have swept across the north.
ISIS has vowed to take the battle to Baghdad and cities further south housing many Shiite shrines. Hundreds of Shiite men were today attending recruitment centres in Baghdad to be armed in response to a call by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for Iraqis to defend their country.
It comes as the Washington Post reported senior U.S. officials have said the Obama administration is preparing to open a direct dialogue with Iran on the security situation in Iraq and ways to push back the radical Sunni militia.
U.S. officials said it is imperative for Washington to discuss the security situation in Iraq with Iran and other regional powers in a bid to better coordinate a response against ISIS.
Security at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad was also bolstered and some staff members were being moved out of the city, a State Department spokeswoman said yesterday.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement that much of U.S. embassy staff will stay in place even as parts of the country experience instability and violence. She did not say the number of personnel affected.
The embassy is within the Baghdad's Green Zone. It has about 5,000 personnel, making it the largest U.S. diplomatic post in the world.
'Overall, a substantial majority of the U.S. Embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place and the embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission,' she said.
Some embassy staff members have been temporarily moved elsewhere to more stable places at consulates in Basra in the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq and Irbil in the Kurdish semi-autonomous region in northeastern Iraq and to Jordan, she said.
U.S. travelers in the country were encouraged to exercise caution and limit travel to certain parts of Iraq.
'Due to the relocation of personnel from Baghdad, the embassy will only be restricted in its ability to offer all consular services; but emergency services are always available to U.S. citizens in need at any embassy or consulate anywhere in the world,' Psaki said.
A car bomb meanwhile exploded in central Baghdad, killing 10 and wounding 21, according to police and hospital officials. Baghdad has seen an escalation in suicide and car bombings in recent months, mostly targeting Shiite neighbourhoods or security forces.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay warned on Friday of 'murder of all kinds' and other war crimes in Iraq, and said the number killed in recent days may run into the hundreds, while the wounded could approach 1,000.
Speaking in Geneva, she said her office has received reports that militants rounded up and killed Iraqi soldiers as well as 17 civilians in a single street in Mosul.
Her office heard of 'summary executions and extrajudicial killings' after militants overran Iraqi cities and towns, the statement said.
However, despite the bloodshed, some Iraqis are already returning to Mosul after Islamist insurgents promised them cheap fuel and food, restored power and water, and the removal of barricades.
Many appeared excited to return, swelled with sectarian pride with the quick advances of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, who Sunni Muslims regard as liberators.
But elsewhere, tens of thousands of others, mainly Shiites, are piling into refugee camps as they flee the deadliest conflict to grip Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-UK invasion.
Abu Thaer, an 80-year-old Sunni who was at a checkpoint on the border of Iraq's Kurdish region, 65 miles north of Mosul, told the Associated Press: 'I hope God supports [the insurgents] and makes them victorious over the oppression of al-Maliki.'
The Shiite-dominated government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which is close to the Iranian regime, has been accused of persecuting the country's Sunni majority.
Sunni citizens' return to Mosul came as Western leaders began arranging for military support to the Iraqi government, which has been rocked by mass military desertions in the face of the ISIS advance.
Today it emerged that SAS advisers could be heading to Baghdad to help defend the Iraqi capital, after Washington announced yesterday that it had sent an aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyers to the Persian Gulf.
Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on Saturday ordered the USS George H.W. Bush from the northern Arabian Sea as President Barack Obama considered possible military options for Iraq. Mr Hagel's press secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby, said the move will give Obama additional flexibility if military action were required to protect American citizens and interests in Iraq.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, who spoke with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday, ruled out sending British troops into action, but said they could help Iraqi counterparts with 'counter-terrorism expertise'.
David Cameron, the prime minister, spoke with the secretary general of Nato about the security situation in Iraq. Downing Street stressed that Mr Cameron's conversation with Anders Fogh Rasmussen did not relate to any possible Nato deployment of military resources, but focused on how the trans-Atlantic alliance can strengthen the ability of countries threatened by violent extremism to deal with the problem.
And a bizarre indirect alliance is now forming with Iran, whose Quds paramilitary force is reported to have sent as many as 2,000 men into Iraq to bolster defences around Baghdad and try to turn back the ISIS advance.
CBS News reports that Qassem Suleimani, the leader of the Quds Force, which is a special forces unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, is in Baghdad along with his fighters to help the Iraqi government co-ordinate its military response.
Videos this morning showed Iraqi forces launching their counter-offensive, with helicopter gunships striking what were identified on militant targets.
To the north of the ISIS-controlled area, meanwhile, Kurdish peshmerga (self-defence) forces, which seized the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Friday, were also advancing on ISIS positions. Yesterday seven Kurdish soldiers were killed in an airstrike, police said, as the situation grows increasingly confused.
The secretary general of the Kurdish security forces said however that only two people had died near the town of Jalawla, Diyala province, in what he described as shelling, and that it was not yet clear whether Iraqi forces or militants were responsible.
The incident and divergent accounts show the potential for security in Iraq to deteriorate further, given the deployment of several heavily armed factions and shifting areas of control.
Both Iraqi and Kurdish sources said ISIS insurgents were also present in the area. Government officials said ISIS fighters were trying to capture Tal Afar in northern Iraq and raining down rockets seized last week from military arms depots.
The officials said the local garrison suffered heavy casualties and the town's main hospital was unable to cope with the number of wounded, without providing exact numbers.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. Tal Afar is mainly inhabited by Turkmen, an ethnic minority.
Mr Thaer and the five veiled women and six children crammed in the back of his car were among tens of thousands who fled Mosul as ISIS fighters and other Sunni militants seized control of much of Iraq's north.
Many Sunnis among them said they left not out of fear of the insurgents but because of dangers posed by airstrikes by Iraqi government forces as they fought back.
The return highlights Iraq's deep religious divisions. Many Sunnis - Iraq's dominant political group under Saddam Hussein - resent Mr al-Maliki's government, which they accuse of discrimination and harassment.
Many of the soldiers defending Mosul abandoned the city before civilians. Associated Press said it's likely that many fled because they sensed insurgents would be welcomed by resentful Sunnis.
Mr Thaer said: 'The army was only good at oppressing Sunnis, but it was nothing more.'
During a single hour on Friday afternoon, an Associated Press reporter saw an 18-seat bus crammed with men, women and children and their luggage. A taxi driver was making regular trips to the city. And about seven other families were crammed into four vehicles, heading home.
Abu Mohammed, a 34-year-old taxi driver who was ferrying returnees back to the city, said: 'We see that they (ISIS) have made Mosul better. The water is back. The electricity is back. The prices are lower.'
Many of those who fled said relatives who remained in Mosul began urging them to come back, saying the Sunni insurgents had restored power, water and were promising not to harm returning residents.
They also emptied out prisons, said 22-year-old Abu Sulaf, a move that immediately improved their popularity. The young man said mostly Shiite forces had harassed and unfairly detained many Sunnis.
Concrete barricades that snarled traffic through the city and lengthened commutes, often by hours, had also been removed, residents said.
So far, only Sunni Arabs appear to be returning. Nazar Ali, a Shiite from the Turkoman ethnic minority, fled with his extended family, even before harvesting their wheat crop from a village near Mosul.
Other Turkomen families said Islamic State fighters were seizing their sons. Rumours spread that they were raping young women or seizing them for forcible marriage.
For him there was no hope of returning, Mr Ali said. 'It's sectarian. We are Turkoman, and we fear they will harm us.'
At a UNHCR refugee camp near Dohuk, inside Kurdish territory, being built for those who had fled Mosul, Save The Children spoke to Delvin, 12, whose family also had no intention of returning to their homes.
She said: 'We fled because we were afraid of the fighters who came to Mosul. My neighbour was killed. They came
shouting at us and wanted to kill us. We escaped carrying nothing.
'That was 10 days ago and we walked for an entire day until we reached the Kurdish region. I wish we had a roof over our head. I really want people to know about this, what's happening.
'My dad had a kidney operation. We used to take him to hospital. Despite his serious surgery he still used to work so that we wouldn’t need anything. He used to buy us all sorts of things; everything, but now we have nothing.'
Mariam, Delvin’s mother, said: 'We left Mosul 10 days ago and arrived to this camp today. From Mosul to Erbil it took us six days, on foot. My children were crying, terrified. We had to flee as we were afraid they would kill us.
'It breaks my heart to see my children crying. We need everything. At night I’m afraid. But we can’t go back.'
Most returning residents, who appeared to be mainly conservative Muslims, shrugged when asked of the insurgents' warnings that they would soon impose their version of strict Islamic law, which includes ordering men to grow beards, making smoking illegal and forcing women to cover their faces.
Clean-shaven, smoking men said insurgents had not bothered them.
'They aren't harming people,' insisted 50-year-old Umm Ghufran, who was returning to Mosul with her extended family. She wore a Muslim headscarf, but did not cover her face.
It appeared that the Islamic State had so far held off on imposing their extreme version of Islamic law because they needed to appease other Sunni fighting groups and more secular former Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein, who all claimed a stake in seizing the city, returning residents said.
Videos uploaded to social networks showed Mosul residents excitedly greeting the Islamic State fighters, who rode around in large cars, their faces covered with scarves, proudly brandishing their assault rifles.
'Sunnis now feel more safe, much more than before,' said Ouf al-Awaidi, son of a prominent tribal elder of the northern city of Kirkuk, whose ancestral village is now run by Sunni fighters. 'If the insurgents remain like this, their support base will only grow bigger.'
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
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